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Commons health committee also recommends end to junk food advertising on billboards and public transport

Fast food chains such as KFC should be stopped from opening near schools, and advertising for junk food on billboards and public transport should be banned to help curb obesity, MPs will say today.

The Commons health committee will also urge ministers to stop giving in to food industry lobbying and get tough to tackle a problem that costs the UK £74bn a year and causes huge illness.

Supermarkets should be forced to display fruit and vegetables prominently, for example near entrances and checkouts, to help boost sales.

All food must start carrying front-of-pack, traffic light-style labels telling consumers how healthy or unhealthy they are, which some supermarket chains already use.

The government should urgently progress its previously announced intention to compel food producers to reveal what percentage of their sales come from healthy and unhealthy products.

Ministers should “be more courageous [and start] standing up to challenge from industry”, which often seeks to delay the introduction of measures to limit bad diet.

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Alaska Airlines is making changes in Hawaii.

The Seattle-based carrier will add two new routes from its hub at Honolulu's Daniel K. Inouye International Airport (HNL): daily service to Idaho's Boise Airport (BOI) from Dec. 17 through March 21, 2027, and Saturday-only flights to Spokane International Airport (GEG) in Washington from Dec. 19 through April 17, 2027.

Both new HNL routes will be flown with Boeing 737 Max aircraft.

At the same time, Alaska will end Hawaiian Airlines ' service to New Zealand. Flights from HNL to Auckland Airport (AKL) on an Airbus A330 will not resume in November as planned.

Hawaiian began flying the HNL-AKL route in 2013, schedule data from aviation analytics firm Cirium shows.

Alaska said the changes are "designed to align capacity with evolving travel demand."

The airline will add flights during peak periods from HNL to Harry Reid International Airport (LAS) in Las Vegas with the A330s freed up from the AKL route.

Post-merger map changes

The pace of network changes is picking up since Alaska closed its merger with Hawaiian in 2024. In June, the airline ended five routes to Mexico in favor of added capacity between the mainland U.S. and Hawaii. And, in 2025, it ended Hawaiian's flights to Boston Logan International Airport (BOS), Fukuoka Airport (FUK) in Japan, and Incheon Airport (ICN) near Seoul from HNL.

At the same time, Alaska debuted new intercontinental flights from its Seattle-Tacoma International Airport (SEA) base. Nonstops to Tokyo's Narita Airport (NRT) and ICN began in 2025. This summer the carrier is adding service to London's Heathrow Airport (LHR), Keflavik International Airport (KEF) in Iceland and Fiumicino Airport (FCO) near Rome .

The goal, as Alaska CEO Ben Minicucci puts it, is to build the airline into a global carrier.

"We are creating the fourth global airline in our country to compete against the Big 3," he said in January referring to American Airlines, Delta Air Lines and United Airlines.

Prior to the latest changes, seats on Alaska and Hawaiian from HNL were down nearly 1% this year compared to 2025, Cirium schedules show. Seats from SEA were up nearly 2%.

Alaska Atmos loyalty members can still access New Zealand on one of the carrier's Oneworld alliance partners. For example, American serves AKL from Los Angeles International Airport (LAX) and Qantas Airways from Sydney Airport (SYD).

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Editorial disclaimer: Opinions expressed here are the author’s alone, not those of any bank, credit card issuer, airline or hotel chain, and have not been reviewed, approved or otherwise endorsed by any of these entities.

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Researchers have extracted DNA from a 50,000-year-old tooth belonging to an African antelope, setting a record for the oldest DNA ever retrieved from sub-Saharan Africa, a new study reports.

The finding suggests that DNA preservation in sub-Saharan Africa is possible for tens of thousands of years. In most cases, the region's hot climate breaks down the molecule and prevents researchers from understanding the evolution of numerous species, including ancient human ancestors and relatives .

While some temperate regions are known for preserving ancient human DNA — for instance, the Sima de los Huesos ("Pit of Bones") in Spain preserved DNA from a mysterious relative of modern humans that lived around 400,000 years ago — the sub-Saharan African climate is less forgiving. The oldest human DNA from sub-Saharan Africa is about 18,000 years old and was discovered in bones found in a rock shelter in Tanzania . And the oldest sub-Saharan animal DNA is just 9,300 years old, from an extinct antelope in South Africa.

In the new study, researchers tested whether DNA could be successfully extracted from ancient skeletons even older than that. By analyzing more than 300 teeth from animals that lived in the past 110,000 years, they discovered that small amounts of DNA could be identified even in remains from the Late Pleistocene , the latter part of the last ice age.

Researchers extracted the DNA from the 50,000-year-old tooth of a mountain reedbuck ( Redunca fulvorufula ), a species of antelope that still lives in Africa today. (Image credit: Getty Images) In a study published online May 27 in the journal Quaternary Science Reviews , researchers extracted DNA from dozens of Holocene bovid specimens younger than 11,700 years old and from four Late Pleistocene bovid specimens between 12,000 and 50,000 years old. Although many of the teeth didn't yield DNA, a handful did. The oldest DNA the researchers found came from a partial molar from an African antelope called a mountain reedbuck ( Redunca fulvorufula ) discovered in Boomplaas Cave in southern South Africa. The other old DNA samples came from three extinct long-horned buffalos ( Syncerus antiquus ) ‪—‬ two that died 21,000 years ago and one that died 12,000 years ago.

"The 50,000-year-old DNA is exciting," study first author Deon de Jager , a paleogenomics expert at the University of Copenhagen, told Live Science in an email. "But I am myself skeptical of it, for two reasons."

The reedbuck DNA is significantly older than the next-oldest DNA the researchers retrieved, from the long-horned buffalo, de Jager explained, and the reedbuck specimen was contaminated with some human DNA, which they were able to remove. These two issues mean the 50,000-year-old antelope DNA result is not ironclad. However, since the publication of the study, the researchers have also sequenced the genome of a 42,000-year-old wildebeest from Ethiopia, suggesting DNA lasts a lot longer in Africa's climate than experts once thought.

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"There is of course a limit to DNA preservation in Africa, but what it is, is not clear," de Jager said. "There are certainly parts of Africa where DNA will be preserved even better than from the sites we have surveyed. Deep caves with stable, low temperatures will certainly be good candidates, but also high-elevation sites where temperatures have been very low for a long time."

The Late Pleistocene teeth that de Jager and colleagues analyzed produced very low amounts of DNA, which is thought to have a half-life of about 521 years, meaning half of the DNA in a specimen disappears every 521 years until none is left. But the amount the researchers found is still useful, de Jager said.

The DNA is sufficient for identifying evolutionary lineages, de Jager added. If they can gather enough data, researchers might be able to compare gene flow and interbreeding among species and populations.

Although these results suggest that DNA analysis is possible for understanding the past 40,000 to 50,000 years of animal and human evolution in South Africa, we may never be able to extract DNA from ancient human relatives like Homo naledi , which went extinct around 240,000 years ago, or Paranthropus robustus , which died out around 1 million years ago.

"I think the chances of obtaining DNA from Homo naledi are very, very low, unfortunately," de Jager said. "One would have to get very lucky with an incredibly well-preserved skull with the petrous bone still present, which is the best bone for obtaining ancient DNA. To get DNA from something in Africa nearly 1 million years old would probably be impossible, as the conditions in Africa are just too harsh."

How much do you know about Earth's frosty past? Find out with our last ice age quiz!

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South Australia Police has deployed six new shadow police vehicles.

Their US-inspired reflective graphics are hard to see in daylight.

Fleet includes Subaru Outbacks, Toyota Klugers and Land Cruisers.

South Australia Police is borrowing from the American playbook with a new fleet of “shadow patrol cars.” Built to occupy the grey zone between traditional marked units and fully covert cruisers, these low-key machines are meant to catch drivers who only mind their manners when they think the law is watching.

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The new police fleet is Australia’s answer to the “ghost cars” and “stealth interceptors” that US state patrols and local departments have run for years.

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During a briefing, Police Commissioner Grant Stevens admitted the agency lifted the concept from its US counterparts, adding that American experience showed subdued wraps do a solid job of disrupting evasive maneuvers and deterring repeat speeders.

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South Australia Police

The opening program works as a proof of concept and runs six police vehicles , among them two Subaru Outbacks, two Toyota Klugers (sold as the Highlander in the US), and two Land Cruiser 300 Series. Each wears color-matched vinyl graphics that stay mostly hidden against the bodywork under bright daytime sun.

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However, when a light source hits the reflective livery at night, the full police wrap illuminates revealing the true nature of the vehicle. To sell the disguise further, these models ditch the usual roof-mounted light bars for smaller strobes tucked inside the grille and behind the glass.

South Australia Police

As with regular police cruisers, the covert units are equipped with operational gear, including speed detection systems, mobile alcohol and drug testing kits, and collision investigation equipment.

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The shadow fleet hits the road right away, with the six cars divided between regional highways and clogged metropolitan zones.

Authorities hope the new vehicles will help combat drink driving, drug-impaired driving, and aggressive road behavior, which are believed to account for 10%, 21%, and 36% of the state’s 61 road fatalities this year, respectively.

H/T to CarExpert

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Kokuyo Energy Line replaces discrete sockets with one continuous slot that takes up to five two-prong plugs anywhere along its length

It won a 2025 Good Design Award thanks to its accessibility, style, and attention to detail

The Kokuyo Energy Line also offers an inclusive design that allows users with upper limb disabilities to easily use the product with just 1 hand

Kokuyo is a well-known Japanese furniture giant that focuses on both functionality and aesthetics across its furniture and interior design lines.

It regularly collects Good Design Awards even as it runs a public "live office" where users can test out hardware in a workplace setting, in addition to HOWS DESIGN, an inclusive-design program that has birthed multiple successes.

The Kokuyo Energy Line power strip is one such offering: it comes with a Good Design Award (2025) and is influenced by the HOWS DESIGN program.

A power strip that blends focus on design, functionality

Modern work desks are a far cry from their older, mundane alternatives at the workplace or at home, offering a degree of customizability that few could have foreseen.

Amid all the upgrades one sees in monitor arms, cable management, electric desks, and even headphone stands, one thing often remains an aesthetic (and often functional) outlier: the modern power strip.

The Kokuyo Energy Line aims to fix this by offering a single continuous power socket that can house up to 5 appliances, with a plug-anywhere design and wiring concealed under the table via a minimalist clamp.

The Kokuyo Energy Line clamped to a table (Image credit: Kokuyo) It also leverages an inclusive design that allows users with limb disabilities to use it easily with one hand, as demonstrated during the company's inclusive design workshop at its "HOWS PARK" diversity office.

The Kokuyo Energy Line clocks in at about 7,000 Yen (~$50) and comes in both black and white colors to suit different themes. It aims to eliminate cable clutter on one's desk with a one-size-fits-all approach.

Despite the advances made, the Kokuyo Energy Line also comes with its limitations: the design means it does not accommodate heavy-duty appliances, with a 5-device limit and a 1500W power ceiling, which may leave users who use high-end computers or multi-monitor setups looking for something different.

Unlike competing power strips, it also lacks a surge protector or grounding support, which limits its use to electronics that use a 2-prong cable.

With no support for 230V power cables or sockets and no plans currently to incorporate them, the Kokuyo Energy Line is an impressive but geographically limited power strip offering that suits the company's target audience looking for an aesthetic upgrade, albeit with serious limitations that could see it not be in play for more demanding consumers in terms of sockets and/or power.